The air in Santa Cruz was warm and still as I sat among perfect roses in the backyard of the bride’s parents. At the key moment of this nontraditional Jewish wedding, the friend presiding over the ceremony took a moment to explain the Hebrew word kadosh. It’s translated as “holy,” or “the holy one,” but it also connotes the act of setting apart or elevating one thing above all other things of a type. Marriage is holy because each partner says, “You are the one person I choose out of all the people in the world.”